In this article we look at the need for dramatically improved public transport as one of the cornerstones of nearly every carfree conversion. A few cities are so small as not to need internal public transport, and a few others already have such good public transport that few improvements are needed. However, nearly every city needs a greatly expanded route network, more frequent service, and faster operations. None of this is difficult to achieve.

The first change required is a change in attitudes. This must begin with the city government and include the public transport agency. In most places today, public transport is regarded as a second-class service for second-class citizens. This is why few people in the US use it: everyone but the poor is expected to have a car and use it routinely. In a few cities, such as New York, the middle class does use public transport and reasonably good service is offered. More positive attitudes prevail in most of Europe.

Public transport must become a first-class service. It must be safe at night, clean, operated by professionals, reliable, and on time. It should be free of all advertising.

It is accepted in most jurisdictions that people will have to stand during rush hour. It is thought too expensive to provide seats for all. With buses, any increase in seating capacity requires more buses and more drivers. However, rail systems can operate longer trains to provide more seats, without increasing the number of operators. Whatever is done, sardine-packed conditions should never arise.

One advantage of driving is ease with which you can take along practically anything you wish. We will not achieve this level of convenience with public transport, but we can get close by making it easy to take along shopping carts and baby buggies. (The system must be fully accessible to wheelchairs in any case.) This requires level loading (boarding platforms at the height of the vehicle floor), which also eliminates slow loading up and down stairs.

Efficient Route Network

Walking to a stop and waiting for a vehicle are usually the two largest components of a trip by public transport. We need to bring stops to within about 500m of every location in the city. This does not entirely solve the problem because the rider may not be going where the vehicle is, which necessitates a transfer. It is not practical to establish a route network in a large city that does not require an occasional transfer. However, we can hold transfers to a minimum and ensure that the actual transfer is quick and easy. This means short walks, no stairs, and short waits for the next vehicle.

The best route network is usually a hub-and-spoke arrangement, with transfers occurring mostly in the downtown area, where service is concentrated and vehicles arrive frequently. The most common activities must be concentrated in the city centre or situated in every neighborhood, as with grocery stores and elementary schools.

Good public transport service is too costly unless the population is clustered around relatively few stops. There is otherwise not enough demand to justify frequent service. The necessary density was usual in most cities less than a century ago and can still be found in many cities. High density became unbearable in the US during the 1920s, when private cars usurped huge amounts of space for parking and movement. At the same time, cars imposed noise, pollution, and danger. That is why, after WW II, American cities rapidly dispersed into low-density, auto-centric suburbs, a pattern now common around the world. Good public transport is impossible in the suburbs: destinations are too spread out and density is too low for any reasonable system to work well.

Choice of Mode

Service-quality considerations dictate the choice of rail systems over bus systems whenever possible. It is clear that people perceive the difference. As I once said, half in jest, “Nobody with a choice ever took a bus anywhere.”

If surface-running rail systems are chosen, they must be installed on their own rights-of-way, where they never compete with cars for road space. When Zurich, Switzerland, decided not to build an underground metro but to fix its trams instead, the first change was to move cars out of the places where they blocked trams.

The choice between trams and metros is argued endlessly. However, in cities with populations over about one million, at least a few metro lines are almost essential, as only they can provide rapid service over the greater distances of a large city. Trams can provide supplementary, lower-demand service in big cities and can be the principal mode in smaller cities. The smaller trains are actually an advantage given the lower levels of demand.

Capital costs of new metros in cities are extremely high, whereas tram systems can be installed comparatively cheaply. However, when demand warrants the high capacity of a metro, it can still be cost-effective due to the comparatively low per-passenger operating costs. A further advantage of the metro is that it can reach very high speeds on its protected right-of-way. Trams can exceed 50 km/hr, but noise and safety problems mean that surface vehicles should travel no faster.

Very large cities need limited-stop regional rail service like the RER in Paris, which links the suburbs with a few major stops in central Paris. New York runs express trains that serve a similar function. Once again, it is a question of speed. Local trains making many stops achieve rather low average speeds, which makes long trips tedious.

High-Quality Service

If we are to ask people to abandon their cars, then public transport must be available at all hours of the night. Many larger European cities have buses that run at least once an hour during the night, and New York’s subway never quits. Some level of night-time service is nearly essential.

Route planning is usually a tiresome chore for passengers. Finding a route to an unfamiliar destination can take a lot of time. The Dutch have an excellent nationwide system that will plan any trip you can make by public transport (which is nearly all of them). I found it reasonably easy to use and highly reliable. This kind of internet service is moderately expensive to establish but cheap to operate.

Likewise, information should be available at tram and metro stops regarding the time until the next vehicle arrives. This allows you to run an errand when you discover that you have a few minutes before the train arrives.

Faster Service

Public transport service must become much faster than it is today. Ideally, it should be faster to take transit than it is to drive, which makes it much easier to persuade people to give up their cars. A number of conditions must be met.

Transit managers need to speed journeys. Seconds count. This is not the current attitude at most systems, where service is considered acceptable if trips run less than five minutes late. But fast service can only be achieved if every aspect of operations is considered from a time perspective. For instance, it would be common in many systems to order new trains without fully considering how long it takes to close the doors and depart. “Only” five seconds might be saved here, but even on a journey of moderate length, that can save the passenger a minute.

Increases in top operating speed have a smaller effect on stop-to-stop time than might be supposed, but it is still important. Metro trains should routinely reach speeds of 100 km/hr, even though they may remain at that speed for a fraction of a minute. Most of the energy can be recovered through regenerative braking.

More important is the achievement of high acceleration, which has a pronounced effect on stop-to-stop times. Research in the 1930s showed that quite high acceleration is tolerable, even for standing passengers, if it is smooth. Some modern trams only achieve quite low accelerations, which significantly reduces average speeds.

Keep the vehicle moving. Station dwell times are a large part of total time. It should be possible to open doors on both sides of the train to allow faster boarding. If one side is used for disembarking passengers and the other for boarding, times are still further reduced, and there is less jostling.

Fewer stops make for much faster service. This point is rarely appreciated. Cutting out a stop saves the time that the vehicle is stopped and also the time lost to braking and acceleration. Buses are chronically affected by this problem – they’ll stop almost anywhere. Good practice keeps the stops at least 400m apart, and 700m is better. Reducing the number of stops also makes the journey more comfortable. Each district must have only one, centralised stop for a given route.

Finally, fare-free transit is worth serious considering. We will not go into the details here, but it saves a lot of time, money, and aggravation for the passenger, which makes transit a more attractive option.

By J.H. Crawford

Gradual Implementation

Although many workers and residents will prefer to walk or cycle to their destinations, almost any carfree conversion demands some form of public transport for a portion of travel within the city. Some people are unable to walk any great distance, or even to move by wheelchair without assistance. Some trips are inconveniently long to cycle, especially in larger cities. And some people, myself included, do not enjoy cycling when the temperature is below freezing. We need frequent, reliable, comfortable service. The means are well known and can be experienced in many places, for instance in Switzerland.

If we accept the requirement for better public transport as a precondition for carfree conversions, then in most places we will have to wait while public transport is improved. This suggests that conversions should start at locations that are already relatively well served by bus or rail. In the early years, these areas will need car parking at the periphery. As public transport is improved, this need should disappear.

The Latin American experience with Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) shows that these systems can be installed in just a few years. I believe BRT master plans should include long-term plans to replace the buses with trams, as buses are uncomfortable, expensive, noisy, and smelly. In cases where streets are very narrow, small trams can pass where a full-sized bus cannot. This is seen in quite a few places in Lisbon, Portugal.

As an aside, I have for years advocated the development of wireless trams. This would enable new surface-running tram routes to be built as quickly as BRT. All that is necessary is to lay the rails. Almost all new trams are low-floor, so the high-level boarding platforms that BRT requires are not needed. Low-level platforms are quick and cheap to construct. They have the smallest possible impact on the street. At the turn of the last century, tram systems were installed in hundreds of cities nearly overnight. We could do it again, especially if we no longer had to string overhead wires. The aesthetic improvement is considerable, and the cost of maintaining the wires is eliminated.

As discussed in the last issue, we should think in terms of rings of decreasingly strict limitations on vehicles as we move away from the central carfree areas. Not only will the diameters of these rings be increased over time, new carfree zones will be added as new public transport and cycling infrastructure are completed.

It will be nearly impossible to keep trucks out of the carfree area until a rail-based freight delivery system is in place. Dedicated systems will be difficult to install in existing cities, but we can use trams for most freight delivery, a practice that is more than a century old and which is enjoying a small resurgence in Europe. In any case, trucks should be restricted to limited hours, a practice now common in Europe. Load consolidation should be enforced. This eliminates the many nearly empty trucks entering the city and sends only fully loaded trucks in their place.

The governing principle is that an area can be made carfree as soon as good cycling infrastructure has been built, public transport is not farther than a five-minute walk away, and reasonable arrangements for freight delivery have been made. An important corollary is that the transport route system must permit reasonably easy, quick, and direct service to the important parts of the city. Transfers are the bane of rapid service. They cannot be avoided entirely, but an efficient route network and frequent service help to make them bearable.

Incentives to Reduce Car Traffic

One trick that has already been quite widely employed is to make car travel so annoying that it is easier to walk, bike, or take public transport. Cities like Groningen in the Netherlands have divided the city centre into several zones. Private cars may not move directly from one zone to the next. They must go all the way out of the city, around the ring road, and back in. Buses, however, move freely between the zones, as do cyclists. Car traffic in the city centre is much reduced.

In similar fashion, streets can be rearranged so that there are fewer direct routes for cars. Implementation can be as simple as just putting some bollards, tables, and chairs into the middle of a housing block. This closes the street to through traffic and gives back some important space to local residents without immediately eliminating too much on-street parking (which is likely to give rise to fierce resistance if proposed). A vital measure is the completion of the network of walking and cycling paths, so that direct routes are established to all destinations. In contemporary North American sprawl, destinations that are quite near by require long routes trips to reach them. This is no problem for car drivers but poses a real obstacle for pedestrians. A few simple paths can solve the problem.

More is required than just these measures. I believe that financial disincentives to urban driving should be implemented. These can be put in place without waiting for better public transport, and can be used to pay for it. External costs, such as air pollution and noise, should be charged and paid for by drivers. By some calculations, this will cause the price of fuel to increase by a factor of ten.

These changes will considerably disrupt people’s lives, so the first increases should be small, with the full charge being implemented over a span of several years. (It has not always been done this way: London’s congestion charge in The City started at GBP £5.00).

Parking fees should be increased immediately. Free parking should be eliminated, and all parking should be taxed. Again, rates should start rather low but planned and announced increases should encourage people to begin to change their transport behaviour. Experience in Europe shows that people will leave their cars at home if there are strong disincentives to driving and reasonable alternatives.

A change of character for our streets

Other disincentives to driving are really incentives to use other modes. We must make the streets more beautiful, quieter, and more lively. We should encourage street food and street entertainment. As street space is reclaimed from cars, we must improve it. This labour-intensive work actually requires relatively little material. We want to remove parking meters, pavement markings, street signs, and the like. They can be replaced by planters, trees, benches and tables, convenient public toilets and drinking fountains, better light-duty pavement, and so forth. We need to fix the storm drains that trap bike wheels and fill the potholes that make riding rough. We will need more bike racks and more public-use bikes.

We can reset traffic signals to give shorter greens for cars, which means that pedestrians and cyclists will not be so long delayed. This has the secondary effect of reducing the capacity for car traffic. Intersections should be narrowed and the turning radius sharpened, so cars have to slow down and pedestrians and cyclists have a safer crossing.

We will need some car-sharing operations because travel to areas outside the city is not always possible by other modes. Experience has shown that car-sharing schemes encourage people to get rid of their own cars, which helps tremendously with parking. At the same time, the rather high fees for using a car discourage casual use.

Finally, I will plead again for what I call the “drag-and-drop bike”. This just takes the white-bike program one step farther. The bikes are free for anyone to use. There are no locks, no pin-passes, and no electronic release. You just grab the nearest bike and shove it in a rack when you’re done. I suppose that kids needing some pocket money will move the bikes to where they are needed and ask for some loose change in return. The bikes themselves can be quite cheap as long as they are simple, single-speed bikes. Solid ones that never go flat would replace pneumatic tires.

We will strive to make a delightful environment that encourages people to give up their cars and walk, bike, or take transit. As we do this, the quality of social life on the street will improve dramatically. People will notice the difference and support the ongoing change to a city with ever-fewer cars. One day the last one will be gone.

Necessary zoning change

We will also need quick implementation of some zoning changes. An end to single-use zoning as practiced in the USA for the past 70 years is essential. Any use should be permitted at in any location as long as it does not interfere with residential life. This change would reverse the concentration of retailers into a few massive stores located far from where most people live. Families who wanted to open a small retail business in their homes would have a presumptive right to do it. Families should be permitted to move into areas that were once reserved only for offices or stores. In this manner, we can bring goods and services back within walking distance of the places people live and work. This greatly reduces the need for mobility and saves people time. The big-box stores will wither away.

By Joel Crawford, carfree.com

The Lyon Protocol Revisited

One of the many fruits of the first Towards Carfree Cities conference held in Lyon, France in 1997 was the drafting of a document known as ‘The Design and Implementation of Large Car-Free Districts in Existing Cities’. I was one of the authors of this document and later gave it the descriptor ‘The Lyon Protocol’. It was a rather hasty piece of work, and so far as I am aware, it has never been revised. I reviewed it before starting work on this article, and I am pleased to see that it holds up quite well after a dozen years. Some of the principles it established have since been expanded upon, most recently in ‘Carfree Design Manual’, which takes as a fundamental belief that future residents of a carfree district should be the ones to do much of its panning and most of its design.

Let us begin with a quick look at the Lyon Protocol. First of all, it recognised the effects of scale. Implementation of small projects would be quite different from larger projects. It was recognised that any large conversion project would require the early involvement of all organisations and individuals who would be affected, including people outside the immediate area of the conversion. Conflicts must be identified early, before they become problems, and broad support for the project must be developed. A data-gathering process, including mapping, demographics, and transport, is an early step. All available information on the site is needed. This is an immense amount of data, but most of it is routinely gathered for large-scope urban planning efforts.

A working group would then develop a preliminary concept. This includes the boundaries of the carfree area, proposed changes in traffic circulation, traffic-reduction measures, and the ultimate carfree plan. In particular, freight delivery and through traffic require careful attention, as these concerns can sink a carfree project at an early stage. Phasing was also mentioned as an early concern, because in most cases a sudden conversion to the desired end result is politically impossible. A ‘carrot-and-stick approach’ would encourage good practices and discourage bad ones. Public transport, bicycle, and pedestrian infrastructure would be improved. Measures would be adopted to slow traffic, reduce the space devoted to cars, and restrict parking.

Street parking near the centre would be the first to go. Cars would be required to park steadily farther away from the centre, encouraging people to use public transport or bike. Parking fees would be greatly increased over a period of a few years. Car use would be reduced gradually. The first to go would be private cars of non-residents, followed later by private cars of residents. Traffic cells would discourage cross-city travel. Parking permits would be sold only with a transport pass. One final change is the conversion of freight delivery from conventional trucks to the chosen system. (The retention of truck delivers during limited hours is an option.) Ultimately, only emergency-service vehicles should be permitted.

The news media are essential to a good outcome, but specific plans should not be presented too hastily. The ground must be prepared by a long discussion of the problems caused by cars and the alternatives that solve these problems. The benefits are large and should be stressed from the start. If this is badly handled, resistance might harden at an early stage. The process is inherently political, and the support of local politicians is essential. To secure broad support, the concept plan is presented to each of the affected groups for discussion. As unmet needs are revealed, they will affect the plan. The process of contacting groups and responding to their concerns would continue until all serious obstacles have been overcome.

Near the end of the process, a week-long intensive community design workshop could be held to manage the more stubborn problems and to secure broad agreement by all stakeholders. This workshop could be sponsored by the city government, which by this time should be strongly in support of the plan. Interested parties would join in this brain-storming process, with the objective of reaching consensus on a plan. City planning officials would then develop final plans and phasing. Do make certain that the city’s final plan respects this consensus. Major deviations should not be adopted without broad discussion.

The Long-Term Master Plan

The Lyon Protocol did not directly address the question of removing cars from an entire city. This leads to a risk that the implementation of plans in one area might interfere with later expansions of the carfree areas. There are a number of points where this might occur, but parking, public transport, and freight delivery are likely.

I do not foresee that cars will completely disappear. Eventually, their use in cities will be largely or entirely prohibited, but a transport mode that reaches rural areas is required, probably involving some continued use of private cars. The interface between rural cars and the city thus requires careful planning. I propose simply to build multi-story parking garages (preferably underground) at the city’s edge for visitors’ cars and car-sharing vehicles. City residents who regularly need a car to travel outside the city could rent a space. These garages must be linked to the city by good public transport. This is, of course, less convenient that driving directly to a destination within the city and will discourage people from using cars unnecessarily.

In Carfree Cities, I proposed the development of ‘utility areas’ at the edges of carfree cities. Utilitarian functions would be located here, including parking, staging areas for freight delivery, warehousing, heavy manufacturing, and other noxious uses. Utility areas require connection to the rest of the city by public transport. For freight delivery I have proposed ‘metro-freight’, an adaptation of passenger metro technology. This system uses standard shipping containers to deliver freight to locations alongside a dedicated freight-only route that runs through the city. Smaller and lighter freight can be delivered short distances by bike or special modes as required. I want to eliminate routine truck traffic in carfree cities.

I believe that the carfree city, if it is to exceed a population of, say, 20,000, will depend upon a high-quality public transport system to connect the various city districts. I believe that this should be a rail-based system, such as a tram or underground metro. I am opposed to the construction of any above-ground transport facility. It is simply too ugly, intrusive, and noisy. Buses could be used instead of rail systems, but the quality of service is lower, and operating costs are higher. Finally, buses are noisy and polluting. Even with the advances made by ‘bus rapid-transit’ systems, I hold that they are inferior to rail.

The master plan for a city that is contemplating a widespread conversion to the carfree model must establish the routes for these systems and the locations for the parking garages and other utility functions. These are not decisions that can be taken on the fly. Rail systems do have one serious limitation: they do not accommodate sharp curves. It is true that narrow-gauge trams can turn remarkably sharp corners (often with an ear-splitting screech), but this is a bad design condition that slows service and increases maintenance costs.

About 50 years ago, Amsterdam looked at its need for metros and adopted a metro network plan. Some parts of that plan will probably never be realised, but once the troublesome North-South line is finally completed, the city will have a coherent metro network that largely follows the originally-identified routes. This sort of large-scale planning should be commenced at an early date in most cities. It is otherwise likely that awkward conditions will arise that have no good long-term solution. Either the work will have to be done again, at huge expense, or the limitations will have to be accepted as permanent.

Keeping to Consensus

This leaves us with the conclusion that while small-scale, local projects can proceed largely without consideration of the city as a whole, large-scale conversions must anticipate long-term changes. One point that is likely to be overlooked is the provision of adequate green space. Many existing cities are seriously deficient in parks near the centre. Plans for carfree conversions should include the ultimate reversion of some of the more sparsely-settled areas to green space, at the same time that areas near transport halts are made more compact.

The need for centralised planning in no way implies that citizens should be excluded from the process. Typically, public input is limited to the conclusion of planning. The planners have already decided what they want to do, in great detail. Changes are difficult to make at that point. A better process involves citizens and their visions at an early stage, with renewed consultation as the plans emerge and are refined. As a matter of practical democracy, this is a better way to proceed.

Finally, we must guard against the influences of special interests. Nowhere more than in urban planning are the interests of rich individuals and corporations at stake than in the adoption of a city’s master plan. It is probably impossible to eliminate this influence, but a transparent process in which all stakeholders and their concerns are clearly identified will go a long ways towards reducing the corrupting influence of private interests on public planning.

In the next article, we will take up the matter of gradual implementation in more detail.

By Joel Crawford

For more information on the Lyon Protocol, please visit: www.carfree.com/lyon_protocol.htm

MOTTOS:

“This leaves us with the conclusion that while small-scale, local projects can proceed largely without consideration of the city as a whole, large-scale conversions must anticipate long-term changes”

“Nowhere more than in urban planning are the interests of rich individuals and corporations at stake than in the adoption of a city’s master plan”